For more than a millennium, Buyukada has lured travelers from the Golden
Horn to its lush hillsides, dramatic cliffs and romantic coves. Only
two square miles in size, Buyukada, population 7,000, is the largest
island in a green, hilly archipelago that rises from the Sea of Marmara
like a convoy of basking turtles. The islands — known as the Princes,
or, in Turkish, Adalar — are actually a far-flung district of Istanbul,
but unlike the city on the mainland, with its roaring traffic,
Wi-Fi-ready cafes, skyscrapers, and galleries and concerts that court a
global audience, they haven’t seemed to have gotten the text message
that the 21st century has arrived. It isn’t entirely clear that the
message about the 20th has arrived, either. To set foot on Buyukada is
to enter a living diorama of the past, wholly preserved. There are no
skyscrapers here, no cars; only bicycles, horse-drawn buggies (called
faytons), filigreed mansions and tile-roofed villas set amid flowery
lanes, and emerald hillsides that drop down to rugged beaches.

I had learned of Buyukada only two years ago, when a beguiling
invitation exhorted me to travel there for a costume party (the theme:
Fruits and Flowers) at a friend’s seaside villa. Having been to Istanbul
twice before, I wondered why I had never heard of this offshore
Shangri-la. Intrigued, I hunted down whatever information I could find,
and learned that the Byzantine Emperor Justin II had built a palace and
monastery on Buyukada in A.D. 569. (He was the “prince” who gave the
Princes Isles their name.) More monasteries followed and in ensuing
centuries they became prisons for emperors, empresses and patriarchs who
fell out of favor on the mainland.

But during the Ottoman era, Buyukada shed that dark heritage and
transformed itself into a pleasure island. Greek fishermen made their
homes there; and, eventually, wealthy families built elaborate mansions
(kosks) and comfortable villas (konaks). For the first half of the 20th
century, the island was popular among prosperous Greeks, Jews, Armenians
and Turks, for whom it served as a kind of Hamptons. But when Greeks
left Istanbul in the 1950s, following a wave of violence against
minorities, they left their wooden summer homes behind them. In their
absence, the island fell out of vogue.  Affluent Turks ignored Buyukada,
preferring to vacation in Bodrum. on the Mediterranean.  The island that had been named for an emperor
became a day trip destination for poor residents of Istanbul seeking
affordable leisure — picnics on the piney beaches of the Dil Peninsula
and horse-drawn fayton rides.

But over the last decade or so, interest in Buyukada has revived. A
number of old Istanbul families are returning to their summer houses,
well-heeled investors are renovating old properties, and a handful of
academics, artists, writers and foreigners (like my host) have come here
to retreat from modernity, setting up stakes in Arcadia. The place is a
time capsule, an hour by sea and a hundred years in time from the
bustling Bosporus.

I didn’t hesitate to accept the party invitation, and so it was that I
got my first glimpse of Buyukada on a blue-skied summer morning from the
deck of a ferry that a friend and I caught at Istanbul’s Kabatas ferry
dock. On the horizon, a cream-and-turquoise terminal rose, domed, with
pillared archways. Soon we were proceeding through those arches along
with throngs of day-trippers who bought wildflower coronets from vendors
and sauntered off in their daisy chain headdresses up a street that led
to a clock tower ruffled with bougainvillea. Nearly all the island’s
shops, restaurants and hotels are clustered there, at Buyukada’s
northern tip. As we strolled, faytons hurried past, bearing women in
headscarves, the drivers chirruping, the horses whinnying. Eventually we
found ourselves on Recep Koc, the colorful market street, and shopped
for our evening’s costumes. For my friend; a bunch of bananas (Fruit);
for me a garland of orange roses (Flowers). Hailing a carriage to the
party, trailing flora, we fell under the spell of this fairytale island.
That was when I knew I would come back: Buyukada deserved a second
look, and a deeper exploration.

And so, this spring, I returned. My party host, Owen Matthews, agreed to
show me the island’s attractions, along with his tireless sons, Ted and
Nikita, ages 5 and 8, and their brisk little dogs. Our plan was to
explore Buyukada in a convoy of bicycles, with a dog or two as mascot.
On Owen’s recommendation, I stayed two blocks from the clock tower, at
an Art Nouveau-flavored wedding cake of a hotel called the Splendid
Palas. Built in 1908, the hotel is double-domed, white as icing and
grandly down-at-heel, with four tiers of balconied rooms and creaky
crimson shutters. Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII once stayed there, and
when I ascended the marble staircase and entered the entry hall, I
almost expected to see the Duke and Duchess appear in the hotel’s
fountained atrium, dancing a ghostly tango. In Istanbul proper, I had
stayed at hotels that looked out on stirring monuments of antiquity,
like the  Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia. But on Buyukada, the hotel itself exhaled the mystery
of another age. So did the street below where a queue of buggies —
green, yellow, pink and candy red — waited for passengers. With their
wicker seats and fringed tops they looked like Easter baskets on wheels.

Soon, Owen, Ted and dog, Martha, appeared on the terrace, and off we
went to fortify ourselves with lunch. We had to walk only a couple of
blocks to the restaurant, but the walk reminded me of the 19th-century
panoramas you might stroll past in a museum exhibition. Wisteria tickled
our heads as we edged alongside konaks with buttressed terraces, carved
moldings and louvered shutters. Some had been gleamingly restored.
Others were frail, stripped of paint, their sagging wooden bones laid
bare, shutters hanging by one nail. They leaned against overgrown trees
like exhausted brown pelicans. To me those derelict buildings breathed
the romance of history, whispering, the present decays; the past
remains. It was a whisper I would hear often over the next few days.
Somehow, it suited my goal as a traveler: to be shaken from my routine,
to discover new pleasures in an unfamiliar context. On my first trip,
Buyukada had tantalized me with that promise. Now, on longer
acquaintance, it intoxicated me, enveloping me in the extraordinary life
of a place whose everyday reality differed so delectably from my own.source:thenewyorktimes.